About

Madhur Bhandarkar is an Indian film director, script writer, and producer. He made his directorial debut with Trishakti.

Madhur Bhandarkar worked as a video cassette delivery boy in Khar, a suburb of Mumbai and delivered video cassettes on bicycle. This gave him access to a large collection of movies and he studied film-making through it.

After working with many film-makers, he made his directorial debut with Trishakti which took more than three years to make and released in 1999. The film had a relatively low key cast and was largely ignored at the box office. After two years he directed Chandni Bar (2001) starring Tabu with a budget of Rs 15 million. The film was critically acclaimed and a box office success, which took Bhandarkar into the top league of filmmakers in Bollywood. He received his first National Award for this film and thereon won National awards for his films Page-3 and Traffic Signal. His movie Fashion (2008) also won National Awards for Best Actress (Priyanka Chopra) and for Best Supporting Actress (Kangana Ranaut).

He is known to create realistic films that receive critical acclaim and box office success.

Madhur was awarded the Gangasharan Singh Award (2009) by the HRD Ministry of India, this Presidential Award was given to him for his contribution to Hindi Cinema. Madhur was then conferred PL Deshpande Award a.k.a. Zenith Asia Award for significantly shaping the film making culture in his unique works and he has been described as ‘the Film Maker of the First Decade of the 21st Century’.

The National Film Archive of India, preserved Bhandarkar’s films- Chandni Bar, Page-3, Corporate, Traffic Signal, Fashion and Jail- in the Government’s Archival data for Indian Films.

Recently, he received the Raj Kapoor Smriti Award (2014) by the Government of Maharashtra for excellent contribution to Indian Cinema.

In July 2015, Madhur received the TSR TV9 Award for “Bollywood Creative Film Maker”.

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